I hope Fat Prophets don't mind me quoting them, Free Advertising guys!
"Much has been made of Japan’s debt mountain, with the country having one of the highest debt to GDP ratios in the world. However the debt is denominated almost entirely in yen and therefore as Japan prints money to stimulate inflation and lower the currency, a lot of this debt will be bought back – in a similar fashion to what the US is doing, but relatively on a much larger scale.
Governments borrowing in their own currencies (backed by their own Central Banks) can never nominally default on debt where they have a means to print money. The default itself is transitioned through a depreciating currency."
The author compared this to Greece and Spain whose debt is in Euros ..thus being unable to print their way out of trouble.
Despite this view I still reckon there will be a price to pay down the track and Gold will then rise and rise ....